TL;DR:  Pappy was always a fan of late September/October travel.  Fall colors were peaking, ankle-biters imprisoned in classrooms, gas prices down from summer.  Time of the year when the tools need a break and the head needs an airing out…

School’s Out Time

My late father, being a fire officer, had a regular vacation, sure.  But, three times a year he also got an “eight-day off.”  Which meant it was time to go fishing.  School be damned. My parents believed that going fishing was an important father-son time.  If that meant missing a few days to go fishing?

Pappy got in hot water with at least one teacher, I can remember.  She was angry and made no bones about it.  “He will miss social studies!” she complained.  “But he will be traveling – seeing America up close, talking to other fishermen and learning about their lives, ” he pointed out.  “If that’s not social studies, I don’t know what you think is…”  The fishing was good.

My two sisters often went on such adventures, along with Mom. Camping was dry – gnerally better than trips after Easter Break.  Fall weather (about now) or either side of Easter Break is fine, generally, too.  Roads aren’t as crowded.  Easier to get a lake side camp site, few if any fire restrictions (YMMV).

While “the kids” were getting along with their “growing up” the folks took time to tour the country on a semi-regular basis.  Swinging down to Las Vegas, for a few days of “serious investing” it was a roll easy across the middle South.  About halfway up the East Coast, the trees were turning.  By the time they got back, venturing into Canada (back when it was a more homogeneous country) the “fall change” along the Trans Canada was quite miraculous.  Mom talked about it for months.

“Regular vacation months” I quickly learned, were for people who were easily herded and like the comfort of other animals.  The more independent you are, the more important vacations become. Until, when you figure out how to have enough to get by – without attracting undue attention- you can design and move into a life featuring a kind of permanent “vacation state of mind.”

The Takeaway?  If you and your spouse can raise three children, each with a Masters in something, and no one in your immediate tribe has ever spent a night in jail? Who, pray tell, is so qualified as to claim rights to judge if, or when, you should be “permitted” to live your life according to your heart and calling?

Oh, and if you ever catch a female King Salmon, heading down Puget Sound to spawn?  Save the eggs in the fridge.  They were the best damn “single-egging” bait for trout fishing that ever was.  Ah, the smell and taste of Thermos coffee with hands still stinking from threading on eggs while trout fishing… You could smell a boat with a smoker in it half a mile upwind.

Plane Lust

Fall is also the time of year when we used to log our best long-range single engine flying adventures. Summer in the south? You need to be airborne at sunrise – or just before. On a sunny summer by not, cockpit plexiglass lined a flying sauna.  Grabbing your initial flight level, bingo!  It’s cooler “upstairs.”  About 3-degrees per thousand feet.  At 9,000 it’s almost 30-degrees cooler on a hot day.  Nothing could be better…

Except for the bills, of course.  With the markets in blow-off mode now, we have thought about another plane – the eyes are marginal, good enough to drive, sure.  But with Elaine’s eyes plus mine – since we did the NIR (red light) therapy and that put the kibosh on her age-related macular degeneration (AMD with a side of iridotomies for safety sake), we could still team fly.

But costs have changed, too.  We got into the Beechcraft (150 HP Musketeer) for a little over $22,000.  Then we went through it for another $20,000 on top of that.  Many upgrades including higher vis. strobes, vortex generators, plenty of easy ADSB and flight deck screens *(iFly GPS) and more.  Peach of a plane.

If the economy hits the skids?  You won’t want big – read: illiquid – assets. You won’t need a financial albatross around. Big boats, twin-engine or faster planes, even an RV (unless you can dry camp it).

Aircraft insurance isn’t as cheap as it used to be (it wasn’t then, either). But fuel has taken a jump.  Most we ever paid until we sold it just before 2020 was about $5-bucks a gallon.  Alaska?  You would expect to pay $10-bucks, but on the East Coast it averages over that now.  But what’s interesting is the price of SAF.  Short for Sustainable Aviation Fuel. Don’t start me on this..just go look.  100LL & Jet Fuel Prices at U.S. Airports & FBOs By Region | GlobalAir.com.  $11 and whaatt???

The Fall We Miss? Oh Yeah…

Back when the map was ours to draw in circles, Elaine and I ran a transcon loop that stitched together friends, FBOs, and valleys with freeways in ’em you could follow like a lifeline. It wasn’t romanticized flying — no Richard Bach prose — just the way it was, and the way you knew it by smell, sound, and the people who came out to meet you with a chock in one hand and a smile in the other.

Bozeman (Bozo, KBZN) was a staple. Popcorn in the lobby, fruit on the counter, coffee always hot. You walked away with sticky pads printed with the airport logo and phone number — real pilot swag. Not because it was free, but because it was useful.

Missoula (KMSO) was a story unto itself. The line chief once walked up with a bar towel draped over his arm, announcing: “May I serve you a quart of our finest 30-weight Phillips XC this visit, Mr. Ure?” That little showmanship turned an ordinary fuel stop into a memory that stuck. And it kept us coming back, because Missoula never felt like just a waypoint. Great hotels, nice river, watching the trout fishermen while decompressing with a cold one at the bar…

Spokane (KGEG) carried more personal weight. Elaine’s half-sister’s late husband worked the line there — a professional jet chauffeur who had the kind of easy grace you only see in seasoned corporate pilots. We trusted that FBO; had brake work done there once. Maybe too much trust, in hindsight.

Because later that day we went non-stop Spokane to Tacoma Industrial (KTIW). Smooth flight, good approach, nothing unusual until touchdown. That’s when the freshly serviced brake grabbed hard  – I had forgotten to do the “muscle memory” reset from a long-soft pedal  — left main locked, aircraft yawed, and for a second I was looking at runway lights coming at us sideways. Training and luck met in the middle, and I kept her just shy of planting those lights with the wing. Rolled into the grass, recovered and – keeping speed up – I immediatelyh taxied back onto the concrete and clear.

The tower came on, voice calm but tight: “19-Lima, are you OK?”
I keyed the mic: “Brake work in Spokane this morning. Left main locked on touchdown. We’ll be clear in a minute…”
A half-beat, then: “19-Lima, nicely handled. Take your time.”

Deep breathing for a good three-minutes before continuing our taxi after off the active.

Mind you, that was NOT an “accident”  but it was an adrenaline adjustment, for sure.

That was the fall we miss — when every leg had a story, every stop was more than fuel, and the people on the ground made you feel like you belonged there. You don’t need to be Richard Bach to say it: the flying was good, the company better, and the memories etched deeper than logbook ink.

Even now I notice the view over my shop/office door:

That was the original prop on the plane when we bought it.  We didn’t know that you could wear out a prop but sure enough, one year it didn’t pass overhaul.  So its replacement was (with labor) another $2.8 airplane (or boat) units.Another consideration while aging: There’s a balance in life: Buy all the fun you can, but without “over-flying the bank account”.

Oh, that picture over my office door?  Somehow I had a peripheral hand in 1984, or so, when we (then at Cayman Airways) leased the Concorde and flew it into Owen Roberts International (GCM),  That was (may still be?) a 6,000 ft. runway.  the British Airways flight crew was expert – be a few minutes before I try a short-field landing in a supersonic dart.  Photos were the landing sequence shot by a photographer Peter C-something (can’t remember his last name, dang it!) – a gift on my departure.  (Thank you for…leaving?)

Those were back in the “high adventure” times of life.  Sitting jump seat on a 737-100 flying into the one-way (no go-around) airport in Cusco, Peru.  Which brings me to another point.

Only two places in all my flying adventures did I have a gun aimed at me by “authorities.”  (Personal quirk, maybe? I always remember barrels, lighting, and calibers…maybe I’m just odd that way.) Once at Lima, Peru.  Machine gun point in the men’s room. Border guard. An unopened pack (or two) of Tareyton 100’s seemed to solve that one.  And once by a “special team” at Deming, New Mexico on a refueling stop. That was a Glock 17 (you tend to remember calibers and types of thing aimed close-in).  No cigarette solution, but a check with flight-following (confirming we were not a pop-up drug plane) and a check of license, insurance, and flight medical and examination of logbook and we were on our way.

Selling the plane (like selling the sailboat, or the Yamaha Virago shaft-drive) were three events in life which stand as examples of “Doing the right thing, at the right time.”  It’s OK to spit in the eye of Fate for a while – if you set things up, just so.  But, comes a time when (as my once upon-a-time) airline boss used to say “When your number comes up, it comes up…”

I’ll be fixing a toilet today (slow refill, time to replace the valve). I promised myself I’d stop doing that somewhere past my 85th birthday.  Don’t tell the kids, I did sneak up on the roof for an urgent problem this week.  Not supposed to be doing that (or cutting down 60 foot trees, last week, either).  They don’t read the columns, though.  Which makes it like it never happened…

Enough hangar talk – someone has to do real work around here.  Take the day and I figure to still be here tomorrow…Elaine has offered to beat shaman drums and add swear-word choruses for the toilet adventure… She could make a dockworker blush.

Ahead?  D’Lynn summed up the growing pessimism in his Saturday post. Enjoy Life while you can.  Stock for when you can’t  Certainly the “ride will be over” when it is.  Life’s a roller-coaster.  Glance at the trackage ahead – and hold on accordingly.

Write when you get rich…

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